Beaten Down But Not Weaker
by lowi
Summary: Those months, those endless months, where they didn't know, and where they felt as though they were fighting for nothing; those months. /For Lady /Gift-Giving Extravaganza 2013 - month one


_A/N: Written for the __Gift-Giving Extravaganza 2013__, month one. This is for Lady (__Lady Phoenix Fire Rose__) who requested a GinnyHarry. I hope you'll like it!_

_Many thanks to mew-tsubaki for beta-reading._

* * *

**Beaten Down But Not Weaker**

She sees him out of the corner of her eye, but when she turns, he isn't there.

Why would he, though? She berates herself for such an _idiotic_ question—_idiot, idiot_—and continues to hurry down the dark corridor.

But then, in her bed, when she's safely back in the dormitory, she makes it up in her head how it would have been if he really had been there.

"Ginny," he would whisper, and she would've stopped dead in her tracks. He would've stepped out of the shadows, and a smile would've fallen across his face.

"You're here." And she would've all but run up to him, and her hands would've shaken as they gripped his shoulders, and they would've melted together in an embrace whilst she feared it wasn't real.

It isn't real. And then she falls asleep.

* * *

"Should we leave?" Neville asks her, both of them unable to sleep. "I mean…," he trails off.

"Maybe we should," she answers. Because, _maybe_. Maybe she could flee, leave for another country, and forget. Maybe it would stop hurting so much.

"We shouldn't, though," Luna says, and both Neville and Ginny jump in surprise as they weren't aware the blonde curled up in the armchair facing them had been awake. "We have to stay."

Neville nods, and Ginny wraps her arms around her knees and her eyes wander across the badly lit Room of Requirement and all the sleeping bodies in there.

* * *

The floor is swaying under her feet and she sees how her hands desperately fight for something to grab hold of—but there is nothing. There's instead a thud, and she wonders if she should be hurting, because suddenly she's not standing up anymore, and all right, it _is _hurting, but not because she fell down.

She bets she's screaming, too.

A pair of eyes meet hers, and she lets herself drown in them, she counts the speckles in the green irises, she notes every time they blink, she is certain she could remember the exact curve of the eyelashes surrounding them—and finally the pain is gone.

She walks out of the classroom with her head held high and she will never know who the eyes belong to, but she couldn't care less.

They were just for comfort.

And they were green.

* * *

"I don't think I can do this any longer," Seamus says. "'ow do you do it? Why aren't you…_breaking down_, Ginny?"

He came to her, since she was as abandoned as him. But she has no answers to give him, because she is just doing it, and if she thinks too much, she won't be able to continue.

"I don't want to talk about it," she says instead.

"Sorry," he says, and there is a slight hint of hurt in his voice as his fingers play with the hem of his sweater. "I just…," he begins, and there are scars on the fingers, on the wrists, and up under the sleeves.

"Me, too." She nods. "But as long as we don't know anything, I suppose it's better than knowing…something."

He knows what she means, and he knows exactly why she won't pronounce it.

* * *

"Can I talk to you?" Demelza stands in front of Ginny, the younger girl's eyes not quite meeting Ginny's.

"Sure, what about?"

"Not _here_," Demelza says in a half-whisper, nodding to the room filled with D.A. members. "Somewhere else. Please?" She adds the last part in a tone that makes Ginny wonder why she never noticed when she became someone to look up to.

"All right," Ginny answers and, even though it's soon curfew, they walk quite a bit, both silent and with long strides. Demelza is almost as tall as Ginny now, Ginny notes.

"Okay," Demelza begins as the corridors become empty enough. It's a little eerie, Ginny decides, and then Demelza launches herself into a tale of upsetting her parents, and Jimmy, and Slytherins, and Ginny doesn't know what she's supposed to do, and how she's supposed to help.

She would have run off, but Demelza is looking expectantly at Ginny, with fear hiding in the edges of her expression, and there is no one else but Ginny.

They are alone already and they don't have to make themselves suffer more silence.

* * *

Another stone is thrown, and Ginny blows on her ice-cold fingers, and the stone skips across the surface, and the water looks horribly black.

And yet, it looks so soft. She wonders how it would feel to have it dripping down her neck, and beneath her clothes. To have it surrounding her entire body. To have the cold erase her senses.

To let it wash her entire being out, and then let it swallow her until it would wash her up on the beach as a piece of driftwood.

But she will not know. Not now.

* * *

He is here.

She blinks.

He is really here.

It is real.

(And she knows that it's not enough, nothing's won, nothing's changed yet—but he is here.)


End file.
